The overarching conceit: you're an up-and-coming architect, learning on the job how to build new structures, and manage the needs of a town. Each level takes place on one of the eponymous Kingdoms of the title, with the eventual goal being to create a palace on the floating island before moving on.

The first few levels are tutorials, letting you get a good grasp of basic mechanics and introducing elements one at a time. In this, it succeeds rather better than many other games, where tutorials are either too cursory and leave the player with unanswered questions, or drag on for far too long when it's obvious what needs to be done. The gameplay in FK is complex enough that you'll be glad of the tutorial help. At the same time, there is a casual storyline in effect, centering around the Chief Architect (who is your main benefactor and teacher) and his romantic relationship with the Queen. Apparently your presence is causing a rift between the two, and things might come to a head later.

That aside, here's how it all works. To create a palace, you'll need to amass a given amount of resources -- wood, stone, etc. -- and at the same time manage the workforce that will build the palace, by keeping them fed. One of the things that's different about the way FK handles this is that the number of resources doesn't remain static; it keeps updating dynamically, meaning you'll need to keep gathering them to meet the building quota.

The other main difference is that, rather than building a structure to grab resources, you must build a structure and then play a mini-game to fill the resource meter. There are many buildings to manage, each with their associated resource. To wit: Sawmills give wood, Quarries give stone, and Goldmines give gold. On the other hand, Windmills give flour, which helps support the Kitchen, which feeds the builders Pizza. Farms give food, the basic food resource (though Pizza gives better nutritional value, go figure). Watermills give water, which support the farms.

All of these structures need to be built to gather their resources, and to do this, the Build button must be clicked, which provides a silhouette of the potential building depending on which part of the island you hover the cursor over, along with a breakdown of how much of each resource is needed. If you haven't enough of a particular resource, the number will be listed in red, providing an easy at-a-glance summary.

Here's where it gets interesting.